1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to sewage treatment and more particularly to a system for the treatment of aqueous raw sewage.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In most municipalities, raw sewage is collected in a complex network of sewer pipes and transported through those pipes to sewage treatment plants. Odor problems and other environmental considerations have dictated that those sewage treatment plants be ideally located in areas remote from the municipalities that they serve. The treatment plants themselves generally include a complex installation of digesting tanks, chemical treatment facilities and other equipment for processing the raw sewage to render it suitable for either disposal into rivers or other waterways, or for reuse such as for crop irrigation, equipment cooling and the like.
Due to the high costs of construction, land, and operation, many municipalities are hard pressed to provide adequate facilities for increasing populations and the decentralized suburban settlements springing up around existing municipalities.
In addition to those problems, disposal of treatment plant by-products has caused environmental problems when disposal thereof is accomplished by dumping into waterways.
Many areas of the country could put the water reclaimed by sewage treatment plants to good use in multiple areas of relatively low volume usage. However, due to the costs for building a distribution system it is not economically feasible to transport the reclaimed water to locations other than points of high volume usage such as large irrigated farms, power generating plants and the like.
Therefore, the need exists for a new and useful sewage treatment system which overcomes some of the problems and shortcomings of the prior art.